The old menu of Cantonese cuisine restaurants in the Republic of China collected by the Guangzhou Museum contains the value of historical elegance, witnessing the prosperity and change of Guangzhou's food culture, and is also the historical evidence of the "Food in Guangzhou" golden lacquer signboard.
In the 1920s, there were four major restaurants in Guangzhou, each of which had a famous dish, and the most famous of them was the Jiangnan Hundred Flowers Chicken, which was said to be "amazing at first and never tired of eating".
In the early years of the Republic of China, Wenyuan Restaurant, one of the four major restaurants in Guangzhou, had a signature dish called "Jiangnan Hundred Flowers Chicken".
At that time, there was also a song that sang like this: "Eating is blessing, eating is Lu, everyone hears familiar, Jiangnan hundred flowers chicken, better than eating dragon meat."
Chinese Cuisine Executive Chef xu Jinhui:
As the saying goes, "no chicken is no feast", the previous big family taste tricky, this chicken "like chicken not chicken", only a piece of chicken skin, the other is shrimp glue, this is actually a classic Cantonese dish.
As soon as the "chicken-like chicken-like chicken" Jiangnan Hundred Flowers Chicken was launched, it was immediately popular in Yangcheng, but with the completion of the Wenyuan Restaurant during the War of Resistance, this complicated famous dish gradually disappeared from the table.
Fortunately, it is collected in the old menu of the Guangzhou Museum, and the production of Jiangnan Hundred Flowers Chicken is also slightly mentioned.
Zhu Xiaoqiu, Deputy Director of Guangzhou Museum:
In fact, this dish eats chicken skin, which is the embroidery kung fu of Cantonese cuisine.
The most important thing is the shrimp glue, the selection of raw shrimp along the texture rubbing, rubbing to smooth and fresh, the choice of shrimp, rubbing gestures and force is different, the effect is very different.
Xu Jinhui, executive chef of Chinese cuisine at China University, introduced that when reproducing this famous dish, he got the guidance of many old predecessors, just the fixation of chicken skin before cooking, he learned a lot of doorways from it.
Chicken skin shrinks when it encounters heat, it will be separated from shrimp glue, use bamboo nets, bamboo skewers to fix the chicken skin, when steaming, the fat of the chicken penetrates into the shrimp glue, fused together fresh and fresh, the upper layer is smooth and tender, the lower layer is fresh and sweet.
A Jiangnan Hundred Flowers Chicken, which integrates the ingenuity and ingenuity of Cantonese chefs, recreates such a famous dish, in addition to being a great blessing in Cantonese cuisine, it is also the embodiment of the innovative spirit of the old Cantonese chef.
* Special thanks: Guangzhou Museum, China Hotel